“The Listeners: U-boat Hunters During the Great War” by Roy R. Manstan

The origins of southeastern Connecticut’s submarine history are vividly explored in this look at one of the decisive weapons of World War I. The scope is global, but the story keeps coming back to New London and Groton, evidence that this may have been the Submarine Capital of the World almost from the beginning.

— John Ruddy

"In West Mills," by De'Shawn Charles Winslow

In this impressive debut novel, Winslow introduces us to Azalea Centre, an independent and solitary schoolteacher who refuses to live by anyone else's rules. Her habit of drinking all day and picking up men at the local roadhouse hardly endears her to the parents of the community, but Azalea is as complicated as her nickname: Knot.

Winslow renders the 1940s era and the African-American community of the title in evocative detail that recalls the finest stories of Zora Neale Hurston. As her friends do, you will find Knot confounding but irresistible.

— Betty J. Cotter

"Book of Bones" by John Connolly

Connolly essentially comprises a crime genre unto himself: His Maine-based private eye Charlie Parker deals with violence and felonies that take place in his "honeycomb" world of shadowy folks doing work for Dark Gods of antiquity. Sounds ... nuts. But Connolly is masterful, and the mix of horror and procedural is wonderful. Connolly is a very "literary" writer with beautiful prose and a day-glo imagination, and "Book of Bones" is a masterpiece that ties together a lot of spooky loose ends.

— Rick Koster

"Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup" by John Carreyrou

This fascinating nonfiction book is a deep dive into Theranos, a tech startup that, its charismatic founder Elizabeth Holmes claimed, was revolutionizing medical blood tests. But the technology often didn't work, so Holmes and her cohorts manipulated the results. Carreyrou broke the story when he reported for The Wall Street Journal. "Bad Blood" also illustrates what hardball tactics Theranos figures used on him. I can't wait to see the movie that Adam McKay ("The Big Short") is making out of this, with Jennifer Lawrence starring as Holmes.

— Kristina Dorsey

"The Orphan of Salt Winds," by Elizabeth Brooks

This Oregon publisher is making a cottage industry of gothic English novels with a contemporary twist. Brooks's novel, about an orphan who is adopted by a strange couple in the fens of England, follows the 2018 publication of "Bitter Orange" by Claire Fuller, an equally eerie and unsettling tale.

"The Orphan of Salt Winds" starts in 2015, when Virginia Wrathmell is about to drown herself in the marsh. To find out why, we must travel back to 1939, the year she arrived at Salt Winds to become the adopted daughter of a doting father and a distant mother. Everything about this novel is perfectly pitched, from the tension between Virginia's new parents and her own reluctance to befriend the girl who interrupts her suicide attempt years later.

— Betty J. Cotter

"The Border" by Don Winslow

Any of you math nerds out there able to calculate WOW to the 3rd power? With "The Border," the genius Winslow finishes his "Power of the Dog" trilogy about DEA agent, Art Keller and his stunning and horrific 45-year trek at the forefront of America's longest-running war: the War on Drugs. These three novels are probably more "real" than any nonfiction accounts of this tragic and ongoing nightmare. Here's some more math for you: the whole trilogy spans 2,100 pages — and you'll blaze through it all like your brain is on fire. Heartbreaking, crushing, and the final chapter in a true masterpiece collective.

— Rick Koster

"Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee," by Casey Cep (Alfred A. Knopf).

Casey Cep's nonfiction account of a murder trial in Alabama exists on two levels. At the outset she tells the story of the Rev. Willie Maxwell, who is a suspect in five murders before being shot to death at a funeral. Despite many witnesses to the crime, no one wants to bring the killer, Robert Burns, to justice, believing he has exacted a punishment the conniving minister deserved.

The murder case, fascinating in itself, becomes even more so when author Harper Lee shows up, intent on writing a book about the case. But even though Lee is largely credited with researching Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," a followup to her only novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird," is not to be. The irony of Cep's account is she was able to write the book that Lee could not.

— Betty J. Cotter

"The Chestnut Man" by Søren Sveistrup

Not sure what it is with these Nordic crime writers, but they're some truly dark folks. It almost seems like if you throw a slashed O or an umlaut into your name, you can immediately conjure brittle and harsh snowscapes, broody and damaged cops — and, most of all, kooks for whom ordinary serial murder isn't near enough. Consider, for example, this lunatic called "The Chestnut Man." Sveistrup is the latest Finn or Norwayist or Denmarkian or whatever to enter the Nordic crime literary arena and he's so good you'll vow that maybe visiting Scandinavia isn't really a safe idea.

— Rick Koster

"Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother's Disappearance as a Child," by Laura Cumming (Scribner).

As a toddler sitting on a beach in northern England in 1929, the author's mother was snatched away. She would be returned after five days and not learn of the incident, or its implications, until years later.

Cumming, the author of "The Vanishing Velazquez," tackles the story of her mother, Betty Elston, with literary insight and reportorial vigor. Her mother's written account of her childhood, along with inscrutable snapshots Betty's father took, become the breadcrumbs leading the author to the family's deepest secrets. The result is a memoir that offers far more than a solution to a mystery.

— Betty J. Cotter

"Ninth House" by Leigh Bardugo

Bardugo, a bestselling author of young adult fantasies, has written a wonderful and spooky first adult novel about a sort of alternate reality simmering among the secret societies at Yale. Each has a distinct and special talent for sorcery — divination, necromancy, etc. — that is cumulatively used to control world events. A separate student/faculty group called Lethe is in charge of policing the societies to keep a sort of balance, and a most unlikely young woman, an ex-LA drug addict-in-recovery, has been brought in as a Yale freshman to help Lethe. Her skill? She can see the dead. Bardugo combines a variety of tropes in a truly fresh and engrossing way.

— Rick Koster

"A Single Thread," by Tracy Chevalier

Chevalier is a historical fiction virtuoso who moves through eras like Virginia Woolf's Orlando, changing voices and gender so expertly that each book stands as a gem of its own. Her latest, about a single woman in 1932 England still mourning the loss of her lover in World War I, starts off slowly but weaves a spell of gripping tension around the reader.

Violet Speedwell finds meaning by learning to embroider kneelers and seat cushions for Winchester Cathedral, but it's her encounter with a married bell-ringer from a distant village that will change her life. Violet's push to escape convention and live life on her own terms gives this novel a sharply contemporary feel.

— Betty J. Cotter

"Me" by Elton John

What a lively, insightful, anecdote-packed, often self-deprecatingly hilarious memoir.

— Kristina Dorsey

"Game of Snipers" by Stephen Hunter

Hunter, who by the way has a Pulitzer Prize in film criticism for the Washington Post, has written about a dozen novels based around Vietnam War vet/sniper Bob "The Nailer" Swagger. Bookstore shelves are crammed with stories about special forces dudes, wars, spies, black ops and so on, but Hunter's series very much transcends genre. These are at once literary efforts as well as thrillers and, with Hunter and the real-time Swagger both in their 70s, "Game of Snipers" is a "game-on" high point in both men's careers — at a chronological point when you'd perhaps least expect it. What "The Nailer" may be lacking physically, he more than makes up with wisdom and experience.

— Rick Koster

"Facing Toward the Dawn: The Italian Anarchists of New London" by Richard Lenzi

Who knew Fort Trumbull in New London was once a colony of left-wing extremists? Not even their neighbors, apparently. So when this well-researched book exposed a closely held secret, it hit a nerve among those from longtime New London families.

— John Ruddy

"The Shameless" by Ace Atkins

It's not my fault I know Atkins and think he's a truly fine man — even though it might seem suspicious each time I add one of his books to a year-end Best-Of list. But it's also true he's one of the best crime writers in the world. This latest in his Quinn Colson series is a masterful accomplishment in which Atkins mixes the brutal realities of crime-bloated, impoverished rural North Mississippi with a poignantly real cast of recurring characters whose lives are complex, compelling and constantly evolving (or devolving). Too, the darkness and despair is balanced brilliantly with the author's spot-on ability for laugh-out loud (but authentic) dialogue.

— Rick Koster